


ruled by secrecy

by bleakmidwinter



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Brief Sexual Content, France - Freeform, Jealousy, M/M, Murder Husbands, On the lamb babeyyyy, Original character perspective, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Season/Series 03, Secret Identities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:40:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27032839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleakmidwinter/pseuds/bleakmidwinter
Summary: Following the perspective of a new intern at the French Psychiatry practice Will and Hannibal are leading their new, pretend lives in, the intern discovers the Doctor and his assistant's relationship isn't as conventional as she assumed it might be.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 18
Kudos: 184





	ruled by secrecy

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song "ruled by secrecy" by muse because muse is a hannigram band i'm tellin yeah

Camille started working at  _ Esprit Clair _ Psychiatry just last week. 

It was more of an internship that she’d scored, to be all of the Doctors’ coffee-girl for lack of a better term. As it was a small practice, it wasn’t all that taxing a job to begin with. With only three psychiatrists working regularly, she didn’t have to fetch much coffee, or fetch much of anything unless asked for it. 

Doctor Hansen is the Doctor who resides in the back of the building, almost out of sight of even the janitor who makes his rounds at night. His door as at the end of a long hall, far past the front desk clerk, and who’s only barrier is Doctor Hansen’s secretary, no not secretary, Hansen has apparently made it clear to staff that he does  _ not  _ have a secretary, but an assistant, even if that scrawny, twitchy, curly haired assistant deadpans to the patients, asking if they have an appointment. 

The first time she asks Hansen’s assistant, Elliot, she thinks his name is, if Doctor Hansen would like a coffee or tea, Elliot scowls, actually  _ scowls,  _ at her. 

She can’t say she’s ever been scowled at in her life, so it takes a moment to collect herself. 

“I get that for him,” he responds curtly, eyeing her up and down with a vague look of contempt. She does not know what she’s done to deserve such treatment. 

In all reality, she’d been hearing marvelous things about Doctor Hansen’s methodology, and as a woman on her way through graduate school, she wants to learn all she can about the practice. After some consideration, she decides she might have to figure out a non-confrontational way to get past Elliot if she wants to make a connection.

She comes back the next day, just in case, to ask again if the Doctor would care for a coffee. All the other Doctors in the practice regularly give her their orders, oddly specific ones she occasionally doesn’t have the ability to actually craft in the subpar lounge kitchen. 

Elliot appears more tired today, exhausted with the question, and his situation. 

“Listen, you don’t need to come down here. I’m sure Doctor Travers and Doctor Gagne need all the help they can get. Their secretaries are all dollop heads.” 

Camille notes Elliot speaks terrible French, with a rough American accent which he is attempting to hide. Perhaps he’s just a self conscious man by nature. She gazes wistfully at the closed door just beyond Elliot’s desk and turns back to a hardened glare. 

“Sorry, I won’t ask again,” she guarantees, mournfully. 

He doesn’t respond, but she can feel his eyes on her back. Though they were light and blue, something in them reminded her of black ice. Slippery and deadly.

Camille had given up hope on ever meeting Doctor Hansen when she got a bag of crackers stuck in a vending machine the next week. She stood there for about two minutes, weakly and inefficiently shaking the giant metal contraption so its claws would let loose on her wasted money when a large hand braces itself on the side and an even larger leg comes around to kick the box with brute, almost expert, force. The roll of crackers falls loose, into the bottom slot. 

“Thank you so much,” she rambles, and turns to find an unfamiliar face. This man is definitely not a patient, not by any means. She can tell almost immediately he is Doctor Hansen. He has to be. His hair is groomed back and his face contains an insurmountable excess of wisdom. . 

He is also incredibly handsome, which she had not expected. No one with those cheekbones would need therapy.

She feels herself blush and stupidly says, “Thank you,” again. 

“You are very welcome,” he replies with a gentle smile. His voice is deep and he is perfectly articulate in his French, but she can still tell he isn't from France, but another country all together. It only adds to the enrapturing yet mysterious air surrounding him. She’s well aware he’s far too old for her, but hey, she wouldn’t complain if he dared to ask her to dinner. She is also well aware she is an attractive woman that many, more unseemly older men, try to exploit. 

The Doctor glances between her and the vending machine and he says calmly, “Let’s see if this contraption decides to eat my money too, shall we?”

With red-tipped ears and a fluster of apologies, she moves aside from card swipe, realizing she had been standing in the way. She waits there awkwardly as he chooses a bag of the same crackers she had chosen. A thousand questions and phrases come to her mind, but her throat feels dry and her voice, lost. 

He doesn’t immediately leave when he gets what he paid for, he turns back to her with narrowed eyes and asks, “Have I seen you around?” 

“Camille, sort of the new intern. Just started almost two weeks ago.” 

He smiles again, and she emphasizes. “I’ve asked your assistant if you would like me to fetch you coffee, but he assured me he was the one that fetched it for you.” 

Hansen raises a brow, looking suddenly amused, as if there were an inside joke Camille was not in on. “Did he now,” he mutters under his breath, then tells her, “He has enough on his plate as it is, I would be delighted if you would bring me my coffee in the mornings.” 

Camille swallows her giddiness and grins brightly. 

“I will do just that, thank you.” 

“I should be thanking you,” Hansen responds courteously. 

There is a harsh clearing of someone’s throat and the two of them turn to find Elliot staring conspicuously. There is anger, nearly violent, emitting off of him in waves and Camille has to shirk back just to avoid his line of sight. 

“You’re taking forever,” he bites out toward Hansen who only smiles wider at Elliot.

Hansen hadn’t been taking long at all, actually. Camille finds it odd that Elliot felt the need to follow him all the way down to the front of the building, to the vending machine, and get mad at him for spending no longer than a few minutes outside his office. She finds it even stranger Hansen appears very used to this treatment from his assistant, as he hands Elliot the crackers. 

“I was on my way back,” he explains simply. 

Elliot glances then between Hansen and Camille, jaw twisting and clenching as he responds tightly, “Yeah okay. Let’s go then.” 

Camille remains respectful, and lets them go without another word. She’s sure she’ll get the chance to talk to the Doctor more often now that he’s allowed her to fetch his coffee in the mornings. It’s Elliot’s behavior that baffles her. She has no clue why he would act so cold, to her, and especially to his boss as it were. 

* * *

Elliot is not happy about Camille showing up with coffee the next morning or the next. 

“What are you doing?” he asks the first time she passes his desk. He almost looks ready to stand and block her entry before she explains.

“He told me yesterday I could bring him coffee. Not making it up,” she assures, but it doesn’t appear to assuage him, his body rigid with tension. 

After a moment Elliot just huffs, “Did he now,” echoing the Doctor’s words from the day prior. He can’t very well stop her, so he settles back down and fixes her with a glare instead. 

The first few days, he glares at her  _ so  _ intensely, she assumes that he might be trying to scare her off, but it doesn’t deter her from entering Doctor Hansen’s office after a polite knock. 

After a few days of this, Doctor Hansen playfully calls her his “Eight o’clock delight,” which warms her significantly. She manages to ask quite a bit about his practice in these moments, and he answers honestly and open-minded. It’s exactly what she signed up for with this internship. 

One morning in particular, she even shares a coffee with him at his desk as they talk about child development scales and stages. She wants to become an adolescent psychiatrist, after all. 

In the vague hope that maybe one of these days the Doctor will be inclined to ask her to dinner, she tries to dress nice and do her makeup, and attempts to lean and flaunt herself in a certain way towards him, but he seems nowhere near receptive, more just oblivious. 

Eventually, after another few repetitive weeks of this, she decides to bite the bullet and ask him herself. As she is departing from his office, she turns to him with intention, and like clockwork, Elliot storms into the office in a blaze of fire and ice. 

“Your nine o'clock is here early,” he announces, voice clipped. Camille can tell he’s avoiding looking at her. His threatening glares have taken the turn into an uncalled for cold shoulder as of late. He doesn’t acknowledge her when she passes him in the morning, even if she greets him kindly. It’s a cattiness Camille thought was reserved for schoolgirls. 

Hansen meets Elliot’s gaze with a strange, challenging glint in his eye. 

Camille clears her throat and they both turn to her then, snapped out of whatever trance they’d just found themselves in. “I’ll head out then.” 

“What is it you wanted to tell me, before you go?” Hansen implores. 

Camille has to gather a little more courage then she’d already conjured this morning, now with Elliot’s glare burning a hole in her head. She keeps her eyes focused on the Doctor when she asks definitively, “I was wondering if you’d be interested in taking me out to dinner somewhere? I’d certainly be interested in going.” 

She assumes that makes her intention clear enough, because Hansen’s eyes widen a bit and the first thing he does is glance at his assistant. She tenses up and turns to face Elliot whose expression she doesn’t expect. 

She’s used to his glares and his irritations, but his look right now is explosive. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he was about to pounce and scratch her eyes out like a jungle cat just broken out of its cage. His eyes almost appear red in the light from the sunrise, casting through the window panes all around them. 

“That is a lovely offer, Camille,” Hansen replies warily and she turns back to him before she crumbles into a pile of dust from Elliot’s ferocity. “However, I’m not sure my spouse would approve. I am in no way offended by your confidence however, I quite admire it actually.”

“Ah,  _ spouse, _ ” Camille laughs nervously, kicking herself for being so stupid. “Sorry, I should have asked before. I must have gotten the wrong signal.” 

At that last statement, Elliot’s fiery gaze directs towards Hansen who is looking, with each passing second, more and more concerned. 

“It is of no importance. If you don’t mind, I think I will take my appointment now,” he tells her, not taking his eyes off of Elliot. 

Camille sighs, taking a few steps back towards the door. 

She’s embarrassed herself in front of two people working for this practice. Now she’ll be lucky if she ever gets a job in psychiatry, however, she doesn’t think Hansen will actually report her to any of the senior partners. Elliot might, if he’s feeling petulant. 

They don’t acknowledge her, almost like stone statues as she leaves and the door shuts with a click. She immediately starts hearing the beginnings of a heated argument, but blocks it out to the best of her ability, not wanting to eavesdrop and cause even more damage than she already had this morning. 

There is no one in the waiting room, as Elliot had implied. Perhaps the nine o’clock appointment is in the bathroom, because that’s the only explanation that makes sense to her and Camille just wants something to make sense today, anything, honestly. 

* * *

The next morning, Camille forces herself out of bed, and she painstakingly retrieves a third coffee, black with no milk or sugar just how Doctor Hansen likes it, from the kitchen portion of the lounge. She doesn’t want to return to his office after what transpired the day before, but she knows she must maintain the air of professionalism she’s been apparently lacking this whole time. 

She makes her way down the looming, dark hall which leads to Hansen’s office. He is normally her last stop so she can stay and chat, but he’s going to be her first today. Thirty minutes early, but it will still give her an excuse to leave if he wants to talk to her. 

The first thing she notices as she grows closer is Elliot absent from his desk. It is either a blessing or a curse. He might be gone and it will be easier just to give the Doctor his coffee and run or Elliot might be inside, and she’ll have to endure another one of his furious staring contests. She wonders if she can write up someone for unkind eye contact. 

Camille has been getting into the habit of not knocking, as Hansen expects her each day at eight, so she doesn’t think to knock when she enters and only gets the door halfway open when she sees exactly  _ why  _ Elliot isn’t at his desk. 

Elliot is splayed out against Doctor Hansen’s desk, on his back, clothes completely off as he’s being fucked into by Hansen himself, whose pants are crumpled down around his knees. He writhes around with his knees framing the Doctor’s suit jacket. 

She can only see the Doctor’s ass and thighs slapping forward into Elliot who is now moaning softly for more, completely enveloped in the sex, as neither of them had noticed the door open. 

“Oh, Han – ” Elliot groans before he’s cut off by Hansen’s lips, kissing him and thrusting harder. Camille is quite certain she’s only seen sex like this in the movies and with a shaking hand, she slowly shuts the door again, and makes her way backward down the hall. 

She doesn’t breathe until she reaches the bathroom and locks herself in the one person stall, heaving over the side of the sink. She’s never walked in on anybody having sex, let alone two men. A lot of things are starting to make sense, and she feels foolish, and embarrassed all at once. She’s just grateful they hadn’t seen her, too absorbed in one another to give anyone else the time of day. 

Though she doesn’t want to, she feels sympathy for Elliot, understanding perhaps that his attitude had been jealousy she’d been entirely oblivious to, just like the Doctor had been oblivious to her advances because… 

Camille laughs to herself, realizing it’s not too big of a deal. 

It had just come as a shock that’s all. 

She leaves the bathroom with the three coffees in a cardboard cup-holder array, and her last thought about that matter is that she finds it strange Elliot would call the Doctor by his surname during sex. 

* * *

A week after she starts leaving coffees with Elliot instead of bringing them into Doctor Hansen herself, Camille wakes up feeling odd. 

She is sitting up straight, and she isn’t in her bed, or even her house. 

Panic sets in at these realizations, and then she comprehends that she is restrained and cannot move. Tied to a chair, with heavy duty rope, and duck tape pressed tightly against her mouth. She feels sluggish, as if she’d be drugged, but she still tries to scream behind the tape, and thrash against the rope. 

This is a basement, she surmises soon enough, as she spots a boiler and the dark cement walls. There is only one small window with bars lining it to the right of her. That is how she knows it is morning. 

Her muffled cries and pleading stop short when a man begins to descend from the stairs just ahead of her. It is Elliot, in an all black suit, hair groomed better than she’s ever seen it. Her eyes widen with fear, and he appears to delight in that. 

“This isn’t personal, Camille,” he vaguely assures her as he steps closer, into the dim light from the lamp dangling above. “It’s just that I can’t let anyone live, doing what you did.” 

Camille makes a panicked, questioning sound, and strains against her restraints again, nearly sobbing when she can barely budge. 

There is nothing she’s done to him that calls for  _ this.  _

“Shh,” he coos, kneeling down to get closer to her, to really look her in the eyes, and for the first time the look in his eyes has no hidden agenda. Pure lust for blood and revenge, and an almost curious and relieved look as well. “I think we’ll take your heart.” 

Camille is frozen in shock as she feels a hand from behind her trail along the soft skin of her neck. She cranes her head as far back as she can to get whoever it is into view and she groans in horror when she sees that it is Doctor Hansen, wearing the same look of brutality. 

It is more shocking on him, far more shocking. She had assumed him gentle and tame, like a housecat, and yet when he steps around to stand beside Elliot, Elliot does not appear even fractionally as intimidating as he does. 

They fit together like puzzle pieces, she thinks morbidly. It appears they do this quite often. 

Elliot turns to Hansen and asks, “Is that alright with you?”   


Hansen keeps his eyes trained on Camille, eyes black and hooded in the shadows, as he wields a knife, taking a step closer. 

“The heart it is, my love.” 

**Author's Note:**

> i really wanted to write this for some reason, i can't even describe what came over me, i wrote this in two hours lol. hope you all like it, it's kinda different from what i normally do, but i had a great time. rip 2 camille who i accidentally kept calling catherine as i kept writing this. xoxo


End file.
